‘Attack a Jew/Blame a Jew’ sounds like a playground game circa 1938… not 2026

Last Friday was Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day. The nation dug deep, as always. Good citizens donated, helping others through philanthropy.

For decades, a Jewish charity, Hatzola, has operated a voluntary ambulance service here, supporting the overrun existing NHS service, for all who live in their catchment areas and are in need – Jews and non-Jews alike. That too is philanthropy.

I woke up yesterday to the news that four Hatzolah ambulances had been firebombed by scumbags with petrol cans.

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And then I – alongside the wider Jewish community – observed two sets of responses. One was heartwarming. Thousands of people reached into their own pockets and gave. In 24 hours, more than £1million was raised for Hatzola NW, covering the price of ambulances and then some.

The other was horrendous. People from across the political spectrum. Far-right, far-left, Islamist, supposedly ‘liberal’ – openly airing the most disgusting, hateful conspiracy theories. Some was crass stupidity – the notion that ‘Jews have their own special ambulance service, just for them’ – although it was notable how, when corrected, many of these ghouls simply doubled down in their ignorant bigotry. Others blaming Mossad did not even have the excuse of ignorance to fall back on – they are just hatred-driven conspiracy theorists, faecal matter in human form. And in this day and age, the internet means hate is not restricted by time zones – and antisemitism has always been an international pastime.

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True to form, they blamed the victims – a narrative that has been thriving since 8 October 2023.  Attack a Jew/Blame a Jew sounds like a playground game circa 1938, but it’s 2026.  I heard dear members of the community describe the latest arson attack as “a line in the sand” – but wasn’t that line drawn when Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz were murdered at Heaton Park synagogue last October? Surely the line is a distant speck behind us by now.

MPs arriving on the scene of the crime with their worry beads, in attempts to ‘reassure’ the community, have done little to nothing to halt the hate

Parliamentarians, and the government in particular, are supposed to lead. The prime minister addressed the hate crime on TV, describing it correctly as an “antisemitic attack”, and incorrectly as “deeply shocking” – no one who has experienced the outpouring of hatred against Jews in the Western world over the last 29 months can really view this latest incident as surprising. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, offered new ambulances to replace the ones destroyed – which inevitably poured oil on the flames for the haters.

But the truth is that MPs arriving on the scene of the crime with their worry beads, in attempts to ‘reassure’ the community, have done little to nothing to halt the hate British Jews have been experiencing over the last few years. They have stood aside, pleading helplessness, as hate has repeatedly marched through the streets. It would be easy to take the prime minister’s inability to act personally were it not for the fact that he seems to show the same political sluggishness in regard to almost every facet of government.

Meanwhile, born-again anti-Zionist Jew, Zack Polanski, was busy at his keyboard. “Antisemitism is vile and has no place here”, he loftily proclaimed – before liking comments on BlueSky which said, among other things, “I think we are going to see a rise in this type of crime as this war continues. People are blaming Israel, and with good reason” (italics my own), as well as posts blaming “the media” for “conflating Zionism and Judaism”.

The truth that so many Jews know – including Polanski, who has chosen to ignore it – is that if Israel did not exist, Jew haters would continue to find new excuses, gripes or petty jealousies to fuel their blazing bigotry. And those haters can burn in hell.